{"id":235274,"date":"2022-08-26T06:56:38","date_gmt":"2022-08-26T04:56:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/llandudno-landlord-slapped-with-interdict-for-using-private-security-to-evict-tenants\/"},"modified":"2022-08-26T06:56:38","modified_gmt":"2022-08-26T04:56:38","slug":"courts-message-in-llandudno-case-dont-take-matters-into-your-own-hands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/courts-message-in-llandudno-case-dont-take-matters-into-your-own-hands\/","title":{"rendered":"Court\u2019s message in Llandudno case: Don\u2019t take matters into your own hands"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/Graphics\/lisa_nelson\/scales-of-justice.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/courts-message-in-llandudno-case-dont-take-matters-into-your-own-hands.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Landlords cannot evict tenants because they are frustrated with the slow pace of legal process, a court has effectively ruled. Illustration: Lisa Nelson<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A Llandudno property owner used private security to evict his tenant and employees ahead of court eviction proceedings, apparently because he was frustrated with delays in the legal process.<\/li>\n<li>The tenant\u2019s employees were forcefully removed by a group of \u201cburly men\u201d who then changed the locks.<\/li>\n<li>The High Court granted an interdict restraining the landlord from interfering with the tenants, pending the outcome of his eviction application.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The owner of a property in upmarket Llandudno, who resorted to using private security to evict a tenant and employees, has been slapped with an interdict, stopping him from interfering with their possession of the property until the outcome of a proper eviction application.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/courts-message-in-llandudno-case-dont-take-matters-into-your-own-hands.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>The owner, Keith Broad, says he launched eviction proceedings in the court, but the matter was only set down to be heard in November.<\/p>\n<p>He engaged private security in July to take back control of the property, because he believed the tenant, Darren Russel, was in the \u201cprocess of concluding a sub-lease which would mean it would be occupied by foreign nationals for an extended period of time\u201d.<\/p>\n<div class=\"editor-summary\"><strong>Read the full judgment <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/documents\/156.pdf\">here<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<p>Western Cape High Court Acting Judge Susan Van Zyl handed down the interdict earlier this month, also directing that Darren Russel, and his employees, Olwethu Sokanyile and Silvester Siweya, who assist him in him running his accommodation business, be given back \u201cpossession\u201d of the property.<\/p>\n<p>This week, the judge delivered her reasons for the order, saying that she had no doubt that the \u201cdriving force\u2019 behind the forcible removal of Russel and his employees was his frustration at the delay in finalising the eviction application.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is self-help in its purest form,\u201d Judge Van Zyl said.<\/p>\n<p>In the application, Russel, Sokanyile and Siweya said they had been in \u201cpeaceful and undisturbed\u201d possession of the property when, on 22 July, guests alerted them that there were intruders on the property.<\/p>\n<p>Russel said there were five men. One, who identified himself as a private investigator working for Broad, told him: \u201cWe are here to remove you from the property \u2026 on the grounds that you are occupying illegally\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Russel said they were threatening and aggressive. He phoned his own private security and the men then left. He also attempted to phone the local police, but nobody answered the phone.<\/p>\n<p>Two days later Sokanyile heard a loud banging on the door. He noticed a large number of men walking around the house, and trying to get in with keys.<\/p>\n<p>He said he was duped into opening up the garage door by the private security company \u201cto discuss the matter\u201d when eight \u201cburley men stormed in\u201d. He was grabbed and thrown on the floor. They threatened to kill him and his dog. Siyewa was also injured and they were both forcibly removed.<\/p>\n<p>The men then moved in and changed the locks.<\/p>\n<p>Judge Van Zyl said the events had not been seriously disputed by Broad, who claimed that Russel was \u201cprofiting from his property\u201d and he had been left without recourse because the eviction application had been postponed until November.<\/p>\n<p>The judge said she did not have to determine whether or not Russel was a lawful tenant or that he was permanently resident there. The fact that he came and went, and his belongings were in the house, meant that he had possession.<\/p>\n<p>With regards to Sokanyile and Siyewa, he said the property was their home \u201cfor at least as long as Russel was the tenant\u201d. Broad had not initiated eviction proceedings against the empoyees, only Russel, even though he has no right to remove them without a court order.<\/p>\n<p>The judge said Broad\u2019s conduct \u201creeks of a pattern of attempts to circumvent the hearing of the eviction application that may very well recur in the coming months\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>She said this was a classic case of spoliation (the wrongful deprivation of another\u2019s right of possession) and granted the interim interdict.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2022 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/courts-message-in-llandudno-case-dont-take-matters-into-your-own-hands.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Landlords cannot evict tenants because they are frustrated with the slow pace of legal process, a court has effectively ruled. Illustration: Lisa Nelson A Llandudno property owner used private security to evict his tenant and employees ahead of court eviction proceedings, apparently because he was frustrated with delays in the legal process. The tenant\u2019s employees [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":235275,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-235274","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/courts-message-in-llandudno-case-dont-take-matters-into-your-own-hands.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}